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Comment by blakes | Hacker News Reader

I agree, "essential" is maybe too strong of a word.

But I do like to ponder the thought of all Google services, or all Amazon services shutting down for 2 weeks. Clearly not as essential, but the impact on the daily life of at least most of the US would at least be noticeable.

I believe these are still the early days of "internet giants". They seem giant now, but with MS, Google, Amazon, and other "giants" aiming to provide much of the structure of not only the internet, but also some of our daily lives (delivery, web, phone, internet access, information/news), I can imagine twenty years from now the reach of these "giants" to be far closer to "essential" then we feel they are now.

Who knows, maybe we will forever be in a cycle of "giants" growing, evolving, and failing without ever becoming essential. I don't know how it will work haha, but interesting to consider.

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Wouldn't giants just imply monopolies? I suspect to a point we are going to see the pendulum swing away from far-right politics towards far left politics. It'll be sexy to break up these giants for political points. Some talk has already be muttered here and there about Trump possibly targeting Amazon. After the Trump presidency, if we manage to get a far left progressive with the intention on breaking up other giants it works to be seen then that under neither political wing are giants protected from witch hunts.

I've long been in favor of ending the Sherman act for this reason. You can target companies that are politically opposed to you by just a bit of rhetoric and government over reach. One interesting way to think about what good breaking up companies do is think of Standard Oil's breakup leading to a butterfly affect so to speak that encouraged the increase usage of carbon base fuels. There were relatively crappy electric car models in the 1900s, there was actually a point where the electric car worked better than gas (1). If Standard Oil was to remain together and lack of competition meant higher oil prices this could have led Ford and others to research ways to make the electric model more capable for the masses as consumer demand would seek such alternatives. 100 years later, we may be in a much better position environmentally..maybe. Just a butterfly effect thought nonetheless. All that said, the best thing to do in order to combat monopolies in the free market is to legalize insider trading and spoofing. The markets will figure it out. Insiders acting on information they know without having to go through SEC hoops would be able to react more quickly and damage firms in ways that could work to destabilize such giants.

1.) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_electric_vehicl...

you are using 'worked better' very generously. people choose the combustion engine because overall it was the best engine at the time, and for many many decades later.

the consumption of oil was going to skyrocket from 1911 no matter what due to technology, during a time where people primarily traveled by boat and train.

Notice I wrote "could have led Ford and others to research ways to make the electric model more capable for the masses as consumer demand would seek such alternatives."

I think if oil was of a higher price due to lack of competition there would have been more incentives by car companies to try to figure a way to make the costs of running a car go down to appeal to the emerging middle class. There would have been more money in R&D at those earlier times trying to solve problems that were not really considered or kept to the side because they were too difficult. I believe for the most part discoveries could be made even then that would build up to suitable electric cars. Of course we wouldn't have had them by 1911.. as one would need to take into consideration the break up of Standard Oil. It would have been interesting to see what the military would have came up with during WWI/WWII if oil was too costly and battles needed to be won with the usage of vehicles and how that would translate over to private business and civilian life.

we have a hundred years of additional research, and tesla alone is putting billions in research and batteries still aren't there. I think you need to picture what life was back at that time, and remember the price of gas wasnt the price point that prevented car ownership. Ford was type-A about getting prices down in all possible ways, but if for some reason standard oil ridiculously increased the price of gas and nobody was able to stop them (I dont buy into the argument standard oil keeping its monopoly would have increased the price of oil so much that an alternative would have been needed), they would have used coal.

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